Page:A Treatise on the Diseases produced by Onanism, Masturbation, Self-pollution, and other excesses.djvu/205

 tunate enough to survive, are a wasting of the mam mæ and a perfect indifference to the act of venery (Bulletin therapeutique, vol. iv., p. 313.)

We need not make many remarks on the effects of castration in the male to show the influence of the testes on the development and vivacity of lascivious desires. We know that it has been asserted that these desires may remain after the loss of these organs. In support of this opinion have been quoted Galen, Juvenal, Brantome and many other authors, particularly Franck, who states that four eunuchs in a city had so many intrigues with females, that the police were obliged to interfere. (Dict. des Sc. Med., vol. iv. p. 269.) But these facts only prove that eunuchs may indulge in pretended coition and that they preserve some sparks of the fire which is generally seated in the testicles. Most authors have attributed the action of these organs in the sense of venery, to the fluid secreted by them, to the semen. They say that this fluid awakes this sense either by the qualities it assumes, when accumulating in the testicles or seminal vesicles, or because it is carried by absorption to all parts of the body. This opinion is certainly much too positive: but in the present state of science, can we, as do many authors, assert that it has no foundation? The qualities of the semen may certainly vary much, as may be proved by the presence or absence of the spermatic animalculæ. It is entertained for instance, that these animalculæ, do not appear before puberty, and that they are not to be found in old age, that they disappear during sickness, and that in many animals, in most birds for instance, they occur only during the season of mating (Dumas, Dict. class. d'hist. nat., art. generation.) The venereal sense becomes imperious, when the individual secretes real semen, and this sense may be felt in old men, after semen is no longer formed. The fulness of the seminal vesicles cannot he absolutely necessary for venereal desires, because these organs do not exist in birds, in many cold-blooded animals and in some of the mammalia. Are these persons in whom